Tag Archives: Tools

Logical and Creative Thinking

22 Thursday Apr 2021

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Right Side vs Left Side of brain

Our brain is an amazing organ of that learns, remembers, controls, moves, repairs a complex body. It is in control of lots of functions and as part of that it is also responsible for our Logical and Creative Thinking. There are lots of articles that talk about the left side of the brain being responsible for Logical and the right side for Creativity. This was first researched by Roger Wolcott Sperry with his work on the split brain.

There are lots of articles that talk about people being left or right dominant on the brain, hence being more logical or creative, however more recently published articles and research show that the activity in the brain is similar on both sides of the brain regardless of how dominant they are “An Evaluation of the Left-Brain vs. Right-Brain Hypothesis with Resting State Functional Connectivity Magnetic Resonance Imaging“.

Either way the brain is still an amazing thing and you can learn to use both Logical and Creative Thinking techniques, you just need to apply a growth mindset.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

Logical Thinking

Logical thinking helps us to make “sense” of things, coming up with solutions and in decision making.

The five W’s and 1 H are commonly used as questioning to help form logical thinking. These are

  • Who
  • When
  • Why
  • What
  • Where
  • How

Some add another H – How Much to the list as cost can play an important factor in decisions.

Creative Thinking

Creative thinking helps us approach things with an out of the box approach and an ability to look at things through different lenses to discover new solutions.

Balanced View

Taking a balanced view across Logical and Creative thinking, the Six Thinking Hats written by Dr. Edward de Bono starts to provide a balanced view by using the idea of parallel thinking to plan and use thinking more effectively. This can include logical and creative thinking.

Blue Hat – Process

  • manage process
  • action plans
  • next steps
  • reviewing thinking
  • summary

White Hat – Facts

  • data
  • facts
  • information needed
  • information available

Red Hat – Feelings

  • feelings
  • hunches
  • instinct
  • intuition

Green Hat – Creativity

  • creativity
  • solutions
  • ideas
  • alternatives
  • possibilities

Yellow Hat – Benefits

  • positives
  • brightness and optimism
  • value
  • benefits

Black Hat – Cautions

  • difficulties
  • potential problems
  • weaknesses

Build on the Skills

Learn different ways of thinking

Learn some new ways of thinking that you have not used before.

Practice and mix it up

As the phrase goes “Practice makes perfect”. Using different methods of thinking can bring different views and possibly different solutions to the problem/challenge.

Personally I have created my own set of cards based on several ways and methods of thinking that I use when I am looking at a problem. See my blog post Playing a Game with Innovation and Thinking.

Work with others

There is nothing better than working with others to bring in different views and ways of thinking that you may not have thought of previously. This is a great way of seeing how other people approach the problem/challenge and help identify if there are areas you can improve/learn on.

Be creative

Spend some time on creative hobbies that will help you build you creative thinking.

Learning a new skill

Learning a new skill will help you develop your thinking.

Further Reading

Journaling my Daily Musings

12 Tuesday Jan 2021

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I am now nearing the completion of another Personal Journal (Number 30). I was at number 13 when I last wrote about my journalling (No Batteries Required: My Personal Journal) and I am still going strong on writing daily.

My normal journal of choice is a Moleskine Plain Pocket Notebook and all of my journals have followed this type so far. I have found them to be robust enough for my needs and use.

My journal normally has a mix between a Journal and a Scrapbook with inserts/stick in’s of tickets, pictures etc where I think its journal worthy. Journal worthy is mainly things that will help anyone reading the journal to get a feeling what we did and as reminders to us.

“The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”

― Chuck Palahniuk

Although in recent times the amount of inserts has reduced with the stay at home messages.

My pen is normally a pilot V7 Hi-Techpoint which I find flows well over the pages in the journals. I have tried other pens and inks (fountain, ball point, etc) and found these to be the best.

Why do I keep a personal journal:

  • Daily routine of writing – keeps my mind fresh in writing skills
  • Keeping my writing skills up in an age of keyboards and touchscreens
  • Memories so the family can reflect on events
  • Keeping notes and remembering events
  • Not everything you do has to be online
  • My journal doesn’t need a battery
  • My pen doesn’t need to be cabled or wifi’d to print with it
  • My journal doesn’t crack when I drop it (although it can get wet)

Downsides of keeping a journal:

  • No Delete Key – just cross out a word/sentence
  • Physical Storage of journals rather than virtual

So what does a collection of 30 Journals(2007-2021) look like………

Two reused large shoeboxes full containing around 13 years of journaling ove 4,888 pages.

I would encourage anyone to start journalling – A great view of what you have achieved during a lifetime.

2020 – The Age of Ambiguity

24 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by in DigitalFit, Tools

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There has been a lot of change in the world and the way that we work is changing and won’t necessarily be the same going forward. With the changes in our lifestyles and work our Mindset is also changing to cope with everything we have to deal with.

I have written before about mindset and how to look at change “Having the Right Digital Mindset“. Going into 2021 its time to revisit these areas and look at how the world today have changed these.

In my blog I said – The Digital Era is enabling “A Growth Mindset in the Age of Abundance”. This is still true, however its more that just a Digital Era. The past 10 or so months has helped to show how we can deal with change on a daily basis and make adjustments. Its more the era of dealing with Daily Ambugity and Change. That said I still believe that going forward my statement holds true.

In my previous post “Having the Right Digital Mindset: Business (Change, Agility and a Growth Mindset)“, I cover the areas of Change, Agility and Growth Mindsets from a Business point of view. The world has had one of the most poinent lessons in dealing with ambiguity in modern times from everything that has happened from a pandemic point of view and the change and turmoil that it has caused. This has meant that everyone has had to deal with the same messages and ambiguity at the same time and factor in our own personal circumstances as well.

Learning to understand and cope with change yourself and your own personal circumstances helps you grow and in work enables any business/organisational changes that are happening. This can also be helped by also learning to work with and deal with ambiguity and help us to cope with the unknown, and act with out knowing what the overall looks like, whilst also breaking our habits to form new ones that allow us to accept and work with change.

I will end by saying that we have all been through a lot. Everyone has had different and similar experiences and its okay not to be okay. Talking to someone helps. It doesnt have to be anyone you know and there are some great services in the world that can help you. Please talk to someone.

Too Much Reliance on SatNav and online maps?

23 Friday Oct 2020

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Knock on the door from a person with a delivery said “Took ages to find your house, is your postcode correct?”. Not quite what I expected to hear. Having lived in the house for a number years and the post office delivering to my house with the same postcode I have had since moving in nothing has changed on my side.

So what’s happened. After some simple checks it appears Google Maps have somehow shifted my postcode over a few roads. That does explain a lot as to why some people have found it hard to find my location in the past such as taxi drivers, takeaways and delivery drivers etc.

I have raised a case on Google Maps to have this corrected

It does raise the question though about how reliant we are becoming on technology to find our way and give locations. Following a map on your phones and devices and not refering back to a map or even looking at the street names (Are you on the right road!).

How much trust do you put into your device and gps to advise your location? There are some great and fairly accurate (GPS dependant) tools/apps such as What 3 Words to find a location, but when relying on a postcode, how much trust do you put in it? For me a SatNav or Online Map will get you to the general location. Now you need to use some detective work to find the place your meant to be.

When finding places there is nothing like carrying map. I still have and use an A-Z Street Map when going to some new places and an OS Map. A road atlas in the car to help plan my route and gain my sense of direction for where I am about to travel to (when not in lockdown of course).

I teach navigation as part of my Scouting and Bushcraft activities in my spare time and always start with the basics of maps and compasses. These navigation methods are very relevant and needed, however the reliance on technology to find a way is still the instinctive urge. Using devices to find your way on an online mapping tool will only be as good as your signal and battery life. Saying that, it is always useful to help with traffic information and other things that could delay your journey. As long as someone with a hand cart full of mobiles isnt ruining your journey.

Online maps do have a place and are useful. Backing that up with a paper based map is always a good option. You may find places you didnt know existed locally!

Map Camp 2020

20 Tuesday Oct 2020

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Recently I attended Map Camp for my first time, which this year was being run online due to the pandemic. Around 1600 participants had signed up to Map Camp due to it being online.

If you are not familiar with Map Camp, its an event (series of events) and workshops/talks around mapping techniques that are being used in businesses and organisations.

The two main frameworks that were discussed on the sessions I attended were Wardley Maps and Cynefin.

There were a number of sessions held across the day that consisted of 3 presentations 15 mins each and a Q&A after each presentation. The format worked very well and kept the interest of the audience well.

Some key comments stuck with me from the sessions I have watched so far:

  • “Wardley maps are useful because they are broadly right but precisely wrong” – @MrsDHW
  • “The key is not the map but the sense making” – Kim Ballestrin
  • “Maps give us permission to ask questions” – Kim Ballestrin

The sessions covered were:

  • It’s Not the Map, It’s the Mapping Activity
    Danielle H-Wilson, Kim Ballestrin, Mark Craddock
  • Cybersecurity: Why Context is your Crown Jewels
    Petra Vukmirovic, Dinis Cruz, Sarah Clarke
  • Can Maps Do Good?
    Matthew Adams, Andra Sonea, Liz Keogh
  • Why Didn’t I Learn This at Business School?
    Marcus Guest, Roser Pujadas, Alastair Moore
  • Can You Build a Business With Maps? Really? Does it Matter?
    Torill Iversen, Prasanna Krishnamoorthy, Rachel Murphy & Daniel Leakey
  • Making Sense of Meaning
    Marc Burgauer, Julius Gamanyi, Sonja Blignaut
  • Maps and Government
    Dr Jacqui Taylor, Tracey Green, Simon Clifford
  • What do Wardley Maps Mean to a Government Minister, Business Executive and a Research Artist?
    Kaimar Karu, Steve Purkis, Sue Borchardt
  • Can Maps Help in This Topsy Turvy World?
    Holger Gelhausen, James Duncan, Jennifer Carlston
  • You Can’t ‘Organize’ Your Way to a Future. Principles Matter
    Farrah Campbell, Cat Swetel, Ben Mosier
  • Maps, Games, and Morality
    Liz Fong-Jones, Adrian Cockcroft, Andie Nordgren
  • Maps and Stories, Friend or Foe? Who Has the Power?
    Andrew Clay Shafer, Tiani Jones, Tal Klein
  • Post Event Fireside Chat

The replay sessions can be found on the Leading Edge Forum website and YouTube.

Also check out the hastags #mapcamp and #mapcamp2020 on twitter for comments and session chat on social media

I am currently catching up with the sessions that I didn’t get to see and certainly looking forward to next year.

Some great advice from Simon Wardley from twitter

Want to learn how to Wardley Map? Try …

4)Courses “Mapping” by Chris (@wardleymaps) learn.leadingedgeforum.com/p/wardley-mapp… “Pragmatic Wardley Mapping” @BenMosior learn.hiredthought.com/p/wardley-mapp…

3) Awesome list @jhngrant wardley-maps-community.github.io/awesome-wardle…

2) Book medium.com/wardleymaps

1) Practice!

Proving it – “If it’s obvious prove it. If you can’t prove it, it’s not obvious.”

08 Tuesday Sep 2020

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I first wrote about this phrase back in December 2014 – “If it’s obvious prove it. If you can’t prove it, it’s not obvious“, which is one of the phrase tools I use when writing things down for others and I have been using this alot with others to help them with writing documentation and helping fill out applications.

I am republishing this blog again as it may be relevent for others, so here is the blog:

This is a phrase that I use a lot and I first came across many, many years ago from someone I previously worked with. Since then it has stuck with me.

When writing documents how often do we assume that the reader will know what we mean or understand that just because we know something is there that they do. I have seen many occasions and have fallen into the trap occasionally myself where you write about something in the manner that you know all the facts but don’t convey them.

An example of this could be a proposal or technical document;

The device has two power supplies;

  • To a technical mind the instant reaction might be that this will probably be connected to two separate power supplies and backed up by generators and UPS.
  • To a financial mind the instant reaction might be that this is extra cost not justified.
  • To the engineer who checks the proposal – I wonder how thats going to be configured?

Where in fact the writer forgot to mention that the device was a chassis that needed two power supplies to provide enough power to all the devices placed into that chassis and is fed from one power supply.

OK – in reality you should always look for redundancy and in this example that could equal four power supplies, but this example shows how easy one statement can be misinterpreted because it was obvious to the writer and not the reader.

Just food for thought… Try running that phrase against the next document, email, CV, Application, etc that you write and put yourself in the readers place.

Hope this helps you with your writing.

Sageous Advice from Daily Stoics

03 Friday Jan 2020

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See Hear SayFurthering my Personal Journalling I have decided that for 2020 I would give the “Daily Stoic” book and journal a go.

I am doing this along side my normal daily journaling and keeping the two separate for now at least.

I’m up to Journal number 28 with 4380 pages written so far and still going strong.

A couple of colleagues have tried the Daily Stoic before and gave it good reviews. The books basically take passages and quotes from Philosophers/Stoics  Epictetus  55 – 135 AD, Seneca 54 BC- 39 AD and Marcus Aurelius 121-180 AD and provide translations into modern life.

Stoicism is a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world – Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism

3 Days in and its going well so far starting my day with the relevant dated page in the book, followed by writing down some Morning and Evening reflections into the Journal. It will take all year to complete the book so will need some habit forming to do this morning and evening. I can see times where this is not practical and would need some planning as carrying the books around is not something I really want to be doing too much. This is where some of it may end up as a digital entry added in at some point in the future.

The advice so far has been on self reflection on choices, learning and saying no to get to those things that matter. You could say it is common sense, but for me its getting the right mindset using some guidance.

Is it worth doing this? At the moment I would say its a bit early in the journey and writing to decide, however so far I have found the advice to be good and the use of the reflection time to be worth while. Writing down notes on what I have read/learnt is a great method of remembering and does reinforce my thoughts. It will be interesting to see if I am still doing this in a few months time and look back against what I have written.

I would like to hear if you have used these books and your thoughts.

Links

The Daily Stoic Website

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living: Featuring new translations of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius

The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living

 

Personal Knowledge Management System – Revised for 2020

02 Thursday Jan 2020

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As the new year has begun, its time to review my Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS) on how I consume information and knowledge, I have blogged about this before and have updated for 2020.

I still split and keep apart my personal and professional lives on Social Media, although occasionally they may cross where appropriate.

Since the last time I wrote about this the amount of information and data that is available has grown and multiplied on a huge scale. Keeping track of what you need to drink from the fast flow of the firehose of information is itself something that needs managing. This is why I have set up my feeds in the manner illustrated below.

PKMS

Personal Life

Personal Journal

Journalling in both a Personal and Work life is a useful tool to keep notes on your thoughts and ideas. In my personal life I still opt for recording these in a Moleskine – See my blog post No batteries required for further details. I find the Moleskine a great notebook to use and the pocket version a good size to use.

Social Media

I separate from my work life from my personal life using things like Instagram and Facebook for friends and family with appropriate security settings in place. Even with those settings you still need to consider that once something is online, it could be public in the future. Wikipedia lists 186 Social Media Websites and this list is out of date. I choose a few mainstream that I am comfortable with. 2020 may see me have a look at some of the others to see if there is any benefit or other data I am missing.

Professional Life

Research

This is split into several areas and these are a few of the inputs that I use to grab information, feeds, data from:

  • Podcasts
  • Audio subscriptions
  • Videos
  • RSS Feeds
  • Web Searches
  • Blog Posts

Podcasts cover both Audio and Video casts that I watch/stream online or download to my Media Player (Audio and Videos) to listen to on journeys (Audio). The mobile is a great device for using as a media player across these casts.

Flipboard

Flipboard provides another stream of data that I consume bringing in news feeds from many sources around a series of topics. It does work well on a mobile device allowing you to flip the pages through the articles.

Feedly

Feedly provides an aggregation tool which I use to collect the stories from blogs and web sites I regularly pull information from.  This provides a list of stories that can be scanned tin a few minutes on a single screen without going via multiple sites. Clicking on a story will bring up a snippet from the source site and provide the link to read the source article if required. Using a series of key strokes you can read the headlines, then move down the articles at a reasonable speed, stopping and opening when needed.

Sources can be categorised to allow an all view or just whats new in a category.

IFTTT

IFTTT (If This Then That) provides a level of automation to my lists from saving articles to creating alerts on topics and triggering different actions as needed to my devices. I would like to automate more of this PKMS to bring the information I need, but it can also help to scan other information to help innovate and see other points of views.

Thinking / Learning Time

This is where view the data streams through the tools and assimilate and think about what has been reported/said. I also use this time to learn and take courses.

Courses

Coursera is a great site to used, but there are lots of others from Industry and Vendors to open learning sites that I use as needed. Relative exams and certificates are then added to my LinkedIn pages.

Blogging and Being Social

From thoughts and research I will write about things through my blogs and publish these into Social Media streams such as Twitter and Linkedin.

I have also been producing a few podcast episodes with other technologists and will look to do some more in 2020.

I have been using GitHub to mainly support some courses but its there as an option to publish data and code in the future.

Do you have a Personal Knowledge Management System or using tools not mentioned above?

Joining the World of Dashcams

10 Tuesday Jul 2018

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DashcamI have decided to be a lemming and follow everyone in the move to equipping my car with Dashcams. Although not a new thing a recent boom in the use of cameras in vehicles has made this  now a very common practice to have one. It is easy to fit a Dashcam to any vehicle to record the driving habits of the driver and other road users.

These range from cheap Dashcams that can record to an SD Card through to more expensive models that send recordings to the cloud (Servers on the Internet) that can then be viewed through a mobile phone app.

So why be a Dashcam lemming? Following a near miss the other day with a car pulling out of a junction (give way) on me without looking at the traffic coming from the right, whilst I was coming along the road, I have decided its time to add some evidence just in case! Well I get this most mornings as the estate I live on is used as a short cut to miss out the main roads and queues of traffic. Time to join the masses.

Also because this is becoming the next thing on being able to easily upload footage to the authorities.

Dashcam footage submission website goes live

Advice from Cheshire Police on submission Dashcam footage

I have noticed that since getting camera’s on the car that there has been a reduction in the number of people that have tried to drive in my boot.

Perhaps with enough evidence I can get a Give Way Junction changed to a Stop Junction. I’m not looking to increase the number of drivers prosecuted, just make the estate I live on safer to drive.

And where do Dashcams fit with GDPR? Some good advice on the link below.

Dashboard Cams – do you need notify the ICO?

Cardboard & Electronics Education

30 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in Innovation, Programming, STEM, Tools

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cardboardCardboard has been a part of childhood learning for a very long time, however its use has evolved from building things, making dens or sliding down grassy hills on it. The evolution on how this material is being used in learning is changing at a fast rate.

Google have been leading the way with the Google Cardboard Viewer that you can put your phone in and experience Virtual Reality at a low cost (phone excluded). There is now an increase of  cardboard kits available and coming on to the market, especially with kits like the Raspberry PI.

Here are some of the kits:

Google Cardboard

A cardboard viewer that allows you to use your mobile phone as a VR device.

https://vr.google.com/cardboard/

Google Voice

A cardboard kit incorporating a Raspberry PI and speaker that uses Google Home as a Voice Assistant. The kit contains a Google Bonnet board that provides functionality to the Raspberry PI and components.

https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/voice/

Google Vision

A cardboard kit incorporating a Raspberry PI and camera that uses Machine Learning to recognise objects. The kit contains a Google Bonnet board that provides functionality to the Raspberry PI and components.

https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/vision

IBM TJ Bot

A cardboard robot that you can build and incorporate a Raspberry PI to experience AI using IBM Watson.

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/initiatives/activitykits/tjbot/

Nintendo Labo

A set of cardboard modules that can be used with a Nintendo Switch

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Nintendo-Labo/Nintendo-Labo-1328637.html

These kits provide a great platform to build on existing skills and learn new skills using reasonably priced components.

Move over Plastics – Cardboard is here (again) !!!

Do you know of any other cardboard kits not listed above?